The easel set up in the center of the room caught his eye. He wandered over to inspect the blank canvas and wondered why she’d bothered setting it up at all if she was supposed to be using his space for her studio.
An idea struck him. If he could make the studio space inviting enough—instead of just shoveling things to the edges of the room like he’d done—it would give him more time with her. And more time together meant more opportunity to drag some answers out of the woman.
It also meant more time resisting his insatiable physical attraction. But he’d spent fourteen years building a tolerance to it. He could handle a few weeks of proximity. Couldn’t he?
After a quick tour to check window and door locks, he was satisfied. Remi was safe. He could go home and for once not stare out his fucking window, wondering what the hell she was doing at 3 a.m. with all the lights on.
Instead, he’d go home and start clearing a space for her.
He was halfway across the street when he realized whose sweatshirt she’d worn to bed.
15
One second, Remi was miserably shoveling rainbow unicorn cereal into her mouth as a replacement for the dinner she’d forgotten to cook or order. The next, the Joy of Painting rerun she was watching went dark, as did the rest of the house. Her spoon flew out of her hand onto the rug.
“It’s just a regular ol’ power outage,” she told herself. “No deranged murderer is out there in this squall cutting the power just to break in and commit a homicide.”
Though maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a weapon of some sort on hand. Just in case. The wind that had been whipping the island since yesterday gave a particularly creepy howl outside the windows.
She tiptoed her way around the couch and into the kitchen, where after a brief, blind rummage through drawers, she found a pair of kitchen shears. Tucking them into the pocket of her sweatshirt, she began a search for candles and a lighter. She found one taper candle and a box of matches that had apparently gotten wet sometime in the last five years and were basically useless.
Uneasiness curled in her belly.
The gas fireplaces still worked, so she’d be warm. The toilet would still flush. A big plus. But it was dark. Very, very dark.
“This is fucking stupid,” she muttered to herself as she dashed across the street in the frigid night air. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a little power outage.”
It was so damn dark. The lights up and down the block were out. Except for the house across the street. The lanterns on either side of Brick Callan’s front door blazed bright, beckoning her like a beacon. Because of course the man she’d been trying to avoid since her drunken alter ego had made a fuzzy yet certainly embarrassing appearance had a generator.
Her teeth were chattering so hard her jaw ached. It wasn’t the cold that had her literally shaking in her boots. Well, it wasn’t only the cold. The dark was suffocating, closing in around her as the cold burned her bare legs.
She wasn’t running to Brick, she told herself even as she picked up the pace, bounding up his front steps. She was merely knocking on a neighbor’s door and—
The heavy wooden front door was wrenched open just as she raised her hand to knock.
“Holy Miles Davis!” she yipped, slapping a hand to her chest and taking an involuntary step backward. “Jesus, Brick. You scared the life out of me. Where are you going?”
“To get you.” He said the words simply as if they weren’t meant to give her solace and hope and make her feel weak in the knees.
His gaze heated her straight through to the bone. He had boots on with pajama pants stuffed into them. On the opposite end, those flannel pants rode low over his hips, revealing the waistband of his underwear. He had one arm shoved through a heavy winter coat and no shirt. The man was shirtless. There was so much to look at.
Her brain came to a screeching halt as she stared at a solid acre of muscular flesh. The comforting bulk of broad shoulders. The taper of his stomach to his narrow hips…and the dangling temptation of an untied drawstring.
“What the hell are you wearing?” he demanded.
Tearing her gaze away from his man chest, Remi glanced down at her middle of the night ensemble. In her panic, she hadn’t changed out of her hoodie and shorts before pulling on snow boots and running for her life.
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about. It’s a hell of a lot more than I was wearing five minutes ago,” she told him.
He swore under his breath, then grabbed her by the front of the sweatshirt and dragged her inside.
“I swear to God, woman,” he said, pulling her further into the house without loosening his grip.
The first few rooms were dark, but the living room was warm and cozy with a fire going in the fireplace and a single lamp casting a glow from the end table.
The light drew her in, instantaneously lowering her pulse from a gallop to a steady jog.
She threw herself on the worn, plaid couch and went to work pulling her boots off. Brick waited until she was done and moved the boots closer to the fire.
On the coffee table, a laptop was open to a search engine. She sneaked a peek when his back was turned.
Remington Ford artist Chicago mayor.
That sneaky son of a bitch was snooping on her.
Under most normal circumstances, it would piss her off. But in the current situation, it damn near made her panic. He needed to leave this alone. She couldn’t let more people get hurt because of her.
While she feigned interest in a blanket on the back of the couch, she noticed him close the computer and move it.
It was quiet, aside from the soft whir from the fireplace fan and the purr of the generator outside.
“Do you want me to turn on more lights?” he asked, his voice low and rough.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Damn that Darius and his pink flamingos. So I did tell you?” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and held them there. “I couldn’t remember if I actually opened my big, fat mouth and told you I was afraid of the dark or if I just wanted to tell you.”
“Why did you want to tell me?” He hadn’t moved any closer. His back was to the fireplace, the coffee table between them. But he still managed to take up all the space in the room.
“Because you used to make me feel safe.”
He flinched. An actual physical recoiling like she’d managed to hurt him. Then it was gone.
“Tell me why you don’t feel safe now. Why you sleep with the lights on. Why your name doesn’t come up in any accident records but you were taken to the hospital for a severe asthma attack.”
She jumped up from the couch, and something slid to the floor, landing with a soft thump.
“Tell me why you’re carrying a pair of fucking scissors in your pocket?”